Last Chance To See The Sn ow Qu een With Me!

Dear Friends,

This coming Thursday, January 3rd, is the final Industry Night performance of my Theater's production "The Sn ow Qu een". It's an amazing show. The music is brilliant and the staging is charming and haunting. The songs really are the best reason to come check this show out.

If you're interested, you can either contact me via email and I'll add you to my reservation. Or just come to the theater and tell them that you're a member of the Entertainment Industry. (A headshot or resume might be asked for.) Tickets are only $10 for this remarkable bit of theater.

They're billing it as "a musical for people who don't like musicals." So, if you're reading this and you're thinking of "Annie" or "South Pacific", don't. Think more along the lines of "Blu Man Gruup" or a really amazing stage concert that has some cool-ass puppetry and shadow puppetry to compliment the music.

And the show isn't Christmas or Religiously themed at all. So don't worry about appearances in the show by either Santa or J.C. It's also significantly gentle in it's message, which basically says, "Be good to the people you love."

Still undecided?

Perhaps you should check out these two clips, then...

This one is "Chris Jonez'z" review of the show for the Trib. It's a little video clip that shows you some of the costumes and samples some of the music from the show. It's definitely a lovely piece illustrating what's wonderful about the show.

Check it out here.

Or you can go here and see some really nice pictures from the show, which include this one...



Once again, here are the pertinent details...

You and Me
Can Go see
"The Sn ow Qu een"
at "The Bio Graph Theater"
This coming Thursday, Jan. 3rd @ 7:30pm.
Your admission price is the criminally low $10.

Email me for more details or to RSVP.

Cheers,
Mr.B

PS. I've intentionally misspelled the names of several of the theaters and shows discussed in this thread to keep them from showing up on search engines. Just FYI.

Backlash!

This is a "viral video" intended to sell us on seeing "Walk Hard".

Instead, I think it sells me on Craig Robinson. I am buying whatever he is selling.

Funny Stuff.
Check it out.

Cheers,
Mr.B

Borat's Guide To Acting

How did I NOT know that this clip existed? Borat took an improv class and even does "an improv". His audition is pretty action packed too.

Some New Headshots. (Sort Of)

A new project that Jessica has turned me onto requires me to get some new headshots. So, last night, I met Greg and Noah at the Biograph Theater and took some shots to use for this project. Greg shot over 600 individual pics and we narrowed them down to 30 possible pics. From there, we narrowed them down further to these 4.

Before you ask, the gig is a period piece, thus the hat and vest, etc. The part is for an old movie-house manager from the 1930's. I think the last picture perfectly captures that.










My mom is always saying that she doesn't have any recent pictures of me. I'll probably frame her a copy of the third one down and give that to her for Christmas.

If I get the gig, I'll post about it here. Dedicated Readers of the blog will probably already know what I'm talking about. It's the project that I can't talk (or post) about.

Cheers,
Mr.B

The Song Of The Count.

Sammy just posted this over on CIN. It made me laugh until I cried. Maybe you will like it too...

You should probably watch this.

Cheers,
Mr.B



(It was the bit about the spiders that pushed me over the edge.)

Buy My Whiskey!

My friend, Ted, is one talented bastard. Look what he left in my email inbox for me today.



That's just about the coolest thing I've ever seen. It's surreal to me that I can imagine something and then, lo, your talented friends make it happen a day later. I have very talented friends.

Also, that Whiskey has got to have a pretty dry taste to it. I mean, it's got that charming British guy on it, so it's got to be smooth and English-tasting, right? Liquid Toffee. And floating in each bottle, like GoldSchlager flakes, you would find three authentic, Mr.B-flavored chest hairs. Who wouldn't want to pick those out of their teeth after downing a bottle of this fine, fine whiskey?

Hilarious.

Thanks, Ted. You really DO rock the house.

Cheers,
Mr.B

The Most Popular Hat In The Bar.

Last Saturday Night, my improv troupe, International Stinger performed our 40 minute long Dickensian Christmas show. You can see clips of the show here. To enhance the Dickensian nature of the show, we all brought costume pieces that we could wear to enhance our Dickensian appearance.

Which gave me an excuse to reach up over my closet and bring down my Bell Topper.


Here we see Mr.B wearing his full Dickensian costume. (The snow came later on the walk to the bar from the theater.)

I got the hat in college, lo, 12 years ago. For a few years, to earn extra cash in college, I did balloon deliveries for a local magician in Bowling Green, KY. If you paid the magician enough and scheduled it in advance, I might show up at your kids party dressed as Blarney (the big, purple non-trade-marked dinosaur), The Fat White or Red Power Ranger, The Horny Happy Birthday Gorilla (that one was for adults) or Fat Batman. The cash was pretty good for the gigs. $40 and they would pick you up and drop you off. Not bad, all things considered.

I always made a ton of cash on Valentines Day. Between the multiple balloon and flower deliveries that I drove for and the frequent request for the Horny Happy Valentines Day Gorilla, I would earn several hundred bucks over a weekend. Sometimes I would let Nick, the chief magician buy down the cash he owed me by ordering rare or interesting costume pieces for me from his many, many catalogs. I got a really groovy pair of Bram Stoker's Dracula style finger extensions. Some cool blue sunglasses and even a Star Trek; The Next Generation captains uniform.

One day I ordered and eventually received the Bell Topper.

I primarily used it for Halloween gigs. It's the perfect hat for a morticians costume or even the Grim Reaper. I wore it for an entire October in 1998, while I designed, ran and operated a local radio stations Haunted House. The Bell Topper has seen a lot of happy use.

But this Christmas, last Saturday night was the first time that I ever got to take it out and wear it around town. Particularly around my friends. And they loved it!

It was the most popular hat in the bar. People wanted to talk to me, because I was friends with the Bell Topper.

And more to the point, people asked to wear it. Lots of people. Loads of people. And because I had my camera handy, I got pics of most of them. Check them out...


Naughty Natanya (pre-show) tries on The Bell Topper.


Ms. Pixy looks "simply smashing" in The Bell Topper.


Look! It's Sam The Bartender! And he's wearing The Bell Topper!


Ryan looks like one Delirious Fish in The Bell Topper.


Later, at The Green Mill, The Bell Topper got a lot of wear too!


I think that Ms.Titi Touche pulled off The Bell Topper look just fine!


For a short time, we lost Kitten Kaboodle in The Bell Topper.


We even had to send Violet Vixen in to go find her in The Bell Topper.

In the end of the night, we learned that not everyone can wear a Bell Topper and get away with it. For some, the hat was too big and their wee heads were too small and they just disappeared altogether. For others, The Bell Topper betrayed them and they ended up looking like a big fat dude, wearing a big fat hat, smoking a big, fat pipe.


This is the picture that I want on the label of my own whiskey brand, someday.

Cheers,
Mr.B

Merry Dickensian Christmas from International Stinger.

J.Ben posted this short, edited video of our recent Christmas Show. Ben picked a few scenes and edited them together. The whole piece was about 40 minutes long. Which is a little ambitious for us. But I think it went all right.



In the piece, we experimented with costumes and Dickensian slang. You have to watch all the way to the end to learn what a "Mandrake" is.

Enjoy!
Mr.B




Merry Christmas, Guvna!

My Imaginary Improv Troupes...

I just ran across a perfect name for an improv troupe.

Azrad The Incombustible.

It's the stage name that a 17 year old Del Close would use when he ate fire in Dr. Dracula's Magic Horror Show, a travelling horror-comedy show. I stumbled upon it while reading this tribute to Del.

The other improv troupe name that I want to eventually use is

The Public Cretinization Project.

That's what Del and Severn Darden would call themselves when they hit the streets of Chicago, staging elaborate pranks on the unsuspecting citizens of Chicago.

I love that these names A.) inspire the imagination and B.) link directly back to the foundations of the artform. I'm saving them here for the right group of improvisers. A group that I can believe in (or build myself). A group that would appreciate the value of those names or at the very least, understand the value of them, even if they don't care much, themselves.

Someday, I'll give those names to an improv troupe. Someday.

There's one other Improv Troupe name that I also carry around with me, but it's more for my personal amusement than anything else. I don't think that any troupe would want to be saddled with this name, but it still strikes my fancy. Maybe it's best possible use is to present it here for your entertainment too.

Eventually, I want to name an improv troupe...

As Gedde As Watanabe.

Named after this guy, of course. Yep, still funny.

Ha ha.

Cheers,
Mr.B

From Filth, You get...

My friend Ryan posted this on his blog.

I think it's fascinating.

It really is all in how you look at it. Check it out.

(NOTE: IT'S ALSO ENTIRELY NOT SAFE FOR WORK BUT THEN IT IS SAFE FOR WORK AND THEN IT'S NOT SAFE FOR WORK AGAIN, BUT THEN IT IS... YOU BETTER WAIT TO GET HOME TO CHECK THIS OUT.)



Cheers,
Mr.B

Lisa Is Published.

Lisa wrote a short story that got picked up by an online magazine, called Common Ties.
It's a personal monologue about Christmas with her dad. Or rather a Christmas between her dad and one of his best friends, Chuck. There's a definite "O Henry" twist to it, but the story itself is gentle and beautiful and just the perfect thing for the Christmas season. You can check it out by clicking here.

Boom. My girlfriend is a published author. She kicks ass and takes names, gentlemen. Look Out!

My Beautiful Girl. (Age 7)

The night before she left to go see her family this weekend, Lisa and I had a little time to visit at her apartment. We had one of those lovely nights where you just lay facing each other and you talk and kiss and tell stories and connect with each other.

In the course of the evening, we discovered that we both have "Presentational Urges" when we're together in our apartments. When she visits me, I want to show her some amazing bit of animation or a Funny Home Videos clip that I've saved for her on my DVR. When I visit her, she board her computer and surfs the internet, showing me websites that she's discovered or funny videos that someone sent her. (The "What's It Going To Be" video down below is something that she showed me.)

Friday night, though, she shared something special with me and I think it's so lovely, so beautiful, that I want to share it with you here.

Lisa's uncle had forwarded some of his home movies onto her. He'd digitized them and stored them in Quicktime videos. Short, home video clips of Little Lisa and her brother and her mother and her father, a couple years before he passed away.

The clip that she showed me on Friday was from 1982 and it's a normal video of Lisa and her brother and her dad horsing around on their back patio. Her dad was teaching her brother how to "throw a punch". He would hold up his hands and Little Mark would throw a gangly-armed punch at his dad and you can hear him on the tape saying, "You call that a punch? Girls punch like that."

Out of sight of the camera, 7 year old Lisa hears this and it gets her Irish up and she applies herself to set her dad straight on how girls punch, exactly. Her dad turns around and he presents his hands to her and Little Lisa throws her biggest, baddest punches...



It's totally "Wonder Woman" time with these punches, right?



This sort of horseplay goes on for a bit. Lisa is swinging away like Joe Louis (if her were trapped in the body of a seven year old New Jersey girl). And then something beautiful happens.

The camera zooms in just as Lisa stops sparring with her dad. He says something to her that the camera doesn't pick up and she considers it...



A private comment between father and daughter. And she looks up at him and smiles at him like this...



And then the camera zooms back out and they go back to horsing around. Her dad turns around and lets her use his butt as a punching bag. He pats her head and she smiles and he walks out of frame. End of tape.

When I saw that smile for the first time it went by on the screen so quickly. If you aren't paying attention, you almost miss it. A moment of pure, loving-daughter delight in between sunny, summertime boxing sessions. But it's there and the camera catches it and it's just so, so beautiful.

That's my girl. I've seen her make that same face, many times, 24 years later. She has the worst poker face in the world. When she's hurt, you know it. When she's angry, Lord, you know it. But when she's happy or delighted, you know that too. She'll share it with you, if you let her. She doesn't hide a thing from you.

I like seeing that she's always been that honest. She adores her daddy in that picture and you can read it a mile away. It's endearing.

No doubt about it, it's beautiful. And so is she.

That's my girl. I do love her so.
(At any age.)

Cheers all,
Mr.B

What's It Gonna Be?

Lisa gets all the credit for introducing me to this video. Next time you see her, tell her you saw it.

Beyond being pretty funny, I think the song is pretty catchy too! I think that it's easily twice as funny as "Dick In A Box."

Enjoy,
Mr.B

(NOTE: THE LANGUAGE IN THIS VIDEO ISN'T EXACTLY SFW. AND IT'S ESSENTIAL FOR GETTING THE JOKE. SO WAIT TO WATCH THIS WHEN YOU CAN HEAR IT AS WELL AS SEE IT.)

Mike O'Connell & Dr Ken's "What's It Gonna Be?"

The Dark Knight Movie Posters.

I love me some well designed movie posters and these two hit the mark. I love the deep, deep blues of these posters and both characters are posed in locations and physical poses that speak exactly to what I imagine them doing. I really love them both.

This is me, officially, getting excited about this movie.

Enjoy,
Mr.B

PS. These are the International Poster Designs, so don't expect to see them popping up at your local metroplex. I mention that in case you want to share them with a friend. At this point, it's best to email them.





EDITED TO ADD: THE DARK KNIGHT TRAILER IS NOW LIVE FOR VIEWING. IT'S ALSO REALLY FUCKING GOOD. Now, HERE, is a Batman Movie that I can get behind. I can't believe that I ever got excited about the 1989 Batman movie. THIS is the Batman movie I always wanted. (I only regret that I didn't get an extras part in it.)

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM INTERNATIONAL STINGER!

To get in the proper Christmas mood, you should probably click here and watch this short video. (This is safe for work and has sound.)

Enjoy!

Cheers,
Mr.B

(Third elf on the right.)

Check out the new Speed Racer trailer...

I gotta admit, I am a sucker for these big, bright, candy-colored epic pics. Shit like this was MEANT to be seen on the big screen.

Let's just hope that the script isn't as stupid as the cartoon usually was/is.

Anyways, it sure is pretty to look at...

Cheers,
Mr.B

The Big News.

I want to see if I can get across the idea of what happened today, without using any words in this post that would be searchable by Google other search engines. I want to share with you what I found out today, but I don't want it getting back to me or this blog. Frankly, I don't want to risk doing anything that would pooch this deal.

So here goes...

Today, my co-worker, Jenn, the girl who shares a very small office with me, took a call from a production assistant with...



Apparently, they're coming to my city in March to film a movie about this guy...



Which is going to be directed by this guy...



They're offering us lots of this...



Because they want to shoot this guys death scene...



which happened to take place outside of...



...which is also where I work now.

If it happens, it'll be in March. For a week, between our shows. And they would close our street to make it look like it did in 1934, when that guy died. (To learn more about that guy, click here.)

Now here's the really exciting part. That guy, that famous guy that this picture is all about, is going to be played by this guy...



Which means that he's going to be hanging around my workplace for a week or so in March.

I would really like to meet him. He looks like he would be a very cool guy in person.

Jenn is meeting the director this weekend to have them walk around the joint and take pictures and check things out. If all goes well, that will move things into the next level, which is contract negotiations, fee settlements, schedules and discussion about what they're going to do to send that whole block back 70+ years.

Me and my friends agree, one of the things that I'm going to ask the production assistant is if a bunch of us can take a day or two off from work to get work on the set as...



Pretty cool, eh?

Now then, do me a favor and kindly avoid using searchable names or terms in your comments, eh? Anything that actually names those lads or the picture, itself, will be deleted from the blog. So play nice, eh?

Cheers,
Mr.B

BBR Holiday Show: Critic's Choice!

Hey Everybody!

Check it out! Our show got Critic's Choice in The Reader today!
Here's the review...

Jingle Belles! (The Naughty List)
Christmas and Hanukkah provide most of the setups - Star of David pasties, for instance - in this variety show of burlesque, stand-up and magic, a holiday version of the monthly Belmont Burlesque Revue. Mark Henderson as host Jack Midnight, who's "between divorces," and Chris Biddle as his sidekick lead the crowd in rousing "Drink, mothafucka" toasts (Biddle nearly knocks back a full beer boot during one song), and even regular stand-up guest Jared Logan nurses a can of Bud as he pokes fun at the Bible and recounts sexual experiences gone awry. He and Tomas Medina, an impressive "geek" magician who doesn't drink but does smoke and eat several cigarettes, get unqualified laughs and gasps. The camp factor of the burlesque should probably be raised a notch, and Henderson's carols, sung straight, sort of disrupt the raucous energy, but this is still a festive late-nighter for anyone thirty for this kind of ribaldry.

Of course, Dedicated Readers will note that "The Apple Juice" bet will not be repeated in future shows. My ass simply cannot handle the pounding it takes to knock back that much apple juice.

But it's nice to get a little more attention on the show AND perhaps sell a few more tickets. That is, after all, the only use for reviews, either positive of negative. (The only difference between the two is that you have to edit negative reviews to pull blurbs for your marketing materials. Positive reviews require less editing.)

Anyways, the show has two more performances. And I bet that this will pretty much seal the deal as far as reservations go for those two shows. And that's pretty great. It's a good show. I want people to see it. This review (albeit booze-oriented) should help that happen.

Cheers,
Mr.B

PS. I'm actually not at the show on the 8th. I'll be in the KY, doing a Santa appearance. But that shouldn't stop you from checking out the show, if you can.

The Apple Juice Bet.

Friends and Loved Ones,

You've probably noticed by now that I've been one very busy bee. December is usually a very busy month for me. The BBR adds shows. Other people add holiday shows. There are dinners and parties and houseguests. Not a whole lot of time left for blogging.

Take last Saturday for example. This was my schedule.

8:30AM - Wakeup, Shower, Dress, Walk Dog, Finish Packing Bag.
9:30AM - Take CTA to Playground for BBR tech.
10:00AM - 12:00AM - BBR Tech.
12:00 - 1:00PM - Brunch with BBR cast.
1:00PM - 2:10PM - Race via CTA to Midway to meet VGT intern. Get her set up on CTA, welcome her to the city.
2:45PM - 3:35PM - Cab to Bevery Arts Center. (The interns plane was late.)
4:00PM - 6:00PM - Perform in the BAC holiday show.
6:00PM - 8:15PM - Bus and el train it back to the PG for Stinger show. (which turned out to be cancelled.) Socks and Shoes get wet.
8:30PM - 11:15PM - Sit at The Town Hall Pub, trying not to fall asleep. Socks and Shoes are almost dry.
11:30PM - BBR call. (Shoes get wet again, walking back to the PG.)
12:00AM - Perform BBR. Drink 1.5 litres of Apple Juice in less than two minutes. Regret it immediately. Pay Greg and Hendo the $5 that I owe them for losing the bet.
1:00AM - Walk to the Town Hall Pub. Begin Farting almost immediately. Continue farting for the next five hours. Pee repeatedly.
2:45AM - Kicked out of the Town Hall Pub, hitch a ride with BBR castmates to the Green Mill (to sneak onto a bus home.) Instead, I get talked into going into the bar.
5:30AM - Falling asleep at the bar table, awakened periodically by my own nearly constant farts (from the Apple Juice), agree to go to the Golden Angel to get breakfast.
5:45AM - 6:30AM - Breakfast with drunk BBR castmates at the Golden Angel. Socks and Shoes are wet. Farting continues unimpeded.
6:30AM - Walk across the street to go home to bed. Walk Dog. Pass Out from exhaustion.
9:00AM - Vomit up applejuice. (but no solid foods which was interesting). Whilst vomiting, I also fart apple-juice-scented farts.

Also, Apple Juice is a diaretic. I enjoyed two days of semi-solid bowel movements after losing "The Apple Juice Bet". Which is, about as badly as a human being can possibly lose a bet - paying for the bet materials, paying up for losing the bet and then suffering diarrhea for two days afterwards. You just keep losing and losing and losing.

I'll be avoiding apple juice for the next two months straight.

Cheers,
Mr.B

37 Jazzy Little Seconds.

Stumbled across this on the Youtube. This young man made this fine little film in his "color concepts class". It reminds me of the old "moving cut-ups" videos that Disney did in the 1950's.

Check it out...



Cheers,
Mr.B